One-dimensional topological edge states of bismuth bilayers
Abstract
The hallmark of a topologically insulating state of matter in two dimensions protected by time-reversal symmetry is the existence of chiral edge modes propagating along the perimeter of the sample. Among the first systems predicted to be a two-dimensional topological insulator are bilayers of bismuth. Here we report scanning tunnelling microscopy experiments on bulk Bi crystals that show that a subset of the predicted Bi-bilayers' edge states are decoupled from the states of the substrate and provide direct spectroscopic evidence of their one-dimensional nature. Moreover, by visualizing the quantum interference of edge-mode quasi-particles in confined geometries, we demonstrate their remarkable coherent propagation along the edge with scattering properties consistent with strong suppression of backscattering as predicted for the propagating topological edge states.
Additional Information
© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. Received 19 November 2013; accepted 1 July 2014; published online 10 August 2014; corrected online 13 August 2014. The work at Princeton and the Princeton Nanoscale Microscopy Laboratory was supported by the ARO MURI program W911NF-12-1-0461, DARPA-SPWAR Meso program N6601-11-1-4110, NSF-DMR1104612, NSF CAREER DMR-095242, ONR- N00014-11-1-0635, and NSF-MRSEC NSF-DMR0819860 programs. S.N-P. acknowledges support from the European Community through a Marie Curie fellowship (IOF 302937). The authors would like to thank F. Freimuth for providing the results of ab initio calculations and J. Seo and X. Dai for insightful discussions. These authors contributed equally to this work. Ilya K. Drozdov & A. Alexandradinata Contributions: I.K.D., S.J., S.N-P. and A.Y. designed and carried out the STM measurements and their analysis on samples synthesized by H.J. and R.J.C. A.A., I.K.D. and B.B. performed model calculations and related analysis. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript. The authors declare no competing financial interests.Attached Files
Submitted - 1404.2598.pdf
Supplemental Material - nphys3048-s1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 63621
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20160113-085622475
- Army Research Office (ARO)
- W911NF-12-1-0461
- Office of Naval Research (ONR)
- N6601-11-1-4110
- NSF
- DMR-1104612
- NSF
- DMR-095242
- Office of Naval Research (ONR)
- N00014-11-1-0635
- NSF
- DMR-0819860
- Marie Curie Fellowship
- IOF 302937
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
- Created
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2016-01-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-03-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field